A new week has started and most of you probably suffers from the Monday syndrome, so it’s time to reach that oh-so-needed-coffee (or tea) and recover from the shock with another interview in the “Social Media Distilled” series.
And this week – Carl Reavey of Bruichladdich distillery (which I had the honor to meet last October) and handle the Bruichladdich presence on Twitter & Facebook. Enjoy!
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Yesterday I posted my recollection of the world fastest distillery tour (™) at Bruichladdich and since it was the last tour on Islay, instead of the customary tasting notes of one dram, we’ll go for the double – two Bruichladdich tasting notes!
The first one is Bruichladdich Black Art 4th edition – I have a bottle of the Black Art 3 and love it a lot – the mix of wood with different and rich wine notes is very good (see my review of BA3 here)
The second one is a Bruichladdich Valnich expression, filled at the visitors center in the Distillery by visitors and this one is from a cask that previously held Rum.
This post was in the writing for a long time and I hesitated completing it as Bruichladdich was our last stop on Islay and writing it brings a bucketful of sadness. But life go on so I finally sat down and completed it, doing it was kind of a relief and it’s way better then going to a shrink 🙂
Bruichladdich, well, as I said above – it was our last stop on the island. We were in a hurry as we had to return our rented car and make it on time for our flight back to Glasgow, but we were passing near Bruichladdich, a mere 500 meters away. How could we NOT stop there, even if not for a tour then just see it and have a dram in the visitors center.
What would be a trip to Scotland without meeting friends and sharing a few drinks? As I’m quite active on twitter, I’ve made lots of friends over the last few years and It was a rare opportunity to (finally) meet some in person, so we’ve setup a meeting at the SMWS venue on Queens Street in Edinburgh.
SMWS, the Scotish Malt Whisky Society for you, is practically the largest whisky club on earth (30,000 and counting). You pay annual subscription and get access to unique cask strength bottling done every month which you can buy or taste at the venues. This is what you get to choose from at the venue:
Impressive selection ah?
This is the 2nd part of the Bruichladdich #LaddieTT2 Tweeter tasting that was held last week. (first part covering the 1st 2 unpeated whiskies is here)
This time 2 peated whiskies. Or to be accurate, 2 heavy peat whiskies, which is a blessing for peat heads (like your truly). Both the Port Charlotte and the Octomore whiskies are ‘sequels’ that this time uses the local Scottish grown barley (which was the tasting theme). Let’s see if and how does the local barley usage impacts those whiskies profile?
Phew, What a long hiatus. The holidays really drained me and I was way too lazy to do anything but celebrate them, and then had a busy week of finalizing my upcoming Scotland trip.
But now I’m back – with reviews of four new Bruichladdich expressions which were part of last week #LaddieTT2 tweet tasting.
Today we’ll review the first 2 drams (and non-peated) from this event – Bruichladdich Scottish Barley & Bruichladdich Islay Barley 2007
1,2,3 this is a test. Do you hear me well? Good! This is the first post in this blog and I’m very excited – Never thought I’ll be opening a blog and actually publishing something 🙂
Not long ago I helped organized a private Bruichladdich testing event for whisky fans, enthusiasts and friends and I thought it may be a great reason to start this blog going.
Couple of months ago I’ve laid my hands on a Bruichladdich Black Art 3.1 bottle and was waiting for the proper opportunity to open it up. As one can expect, such moments never materialized when you need them :-). So after realizing that I need to force that moment, I came up with the idea to organize Bruichladdich tasting event as an excuse to open the bottle…
After couple of months (Summer vacations, family events and holidays intervened..) we finally arrived to that moment: 9 great whisky fans and friends met to taste 7 Bruichladdich whiskies – some ‘standard’ laddies and some peated expressions
Whisky Gospel 